Slashing the cost of the SiC MOSFET

Focus:

By manufacturing SiC MOSFETs on 150-mm (6-inch) CMOS silicon lines, fabless start-up Monolith Semiconductor plans to lower the cost of SiC MOSFETs to that of silicon IGBTs within five to eight years. The recent availability of high-quality 6-inch SiC substrates and epitaxial wafers makes this possible. But then compatible SiC processes are also needed. As the authors explain "by adopting properly designed process integration techniques and introducing a few SiC-specific tools, it is possible to fabricate SiC MOSFETs in silicon CMOS fabs with the same set of tools and processes that are used for processing silicon wafers at high volumes." This article discusses Monolith Semiconductor's plans and the factors that will drive down the cost of making SiC MOSFETs. Customer concerns over device reliability such as gate-oxide lifetime and high-temperature threshold voltage stability are also discussed along with the results of reliability tests conducted so far.

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Author & Publication:

Sujit Banerjee, Kevin Matocha, and Kiran Chatty from Monolith Semiconductor, Compound Semiconductor, Oct 01 2015

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